SmartSound.com is a royalty-free audio library featuring tracks that can be customized with length, instruments and intensity using its proprietary Sonicfire Pro software. It’s pretty powerful stuff that offers timing control, mood mapping, custom length, variations on the tracks and the ability to search all of the tracks directly and make purchases without leaving the software application.

I’m a big fan and frequent user of Smartsound. All of the music from my recent short Nerfed and my intro segments from my CES videos were built inside Sonicfire Pro 5.8.3 and, ultimately, ended up in my final sequences in FCP X. Now, the company has extended the power of Sonicfire Pro with a plugin for Final Cut Pro X, which allows you to use a generator to create a custom length audio track and then select a track from Sonicfire Pro to send to a library within FCP X.

Adobe is teasing some of its new Premiere Pro features just ahead of NAB 2013, which kicks off next week.

Over the past couple of years, Adobe has been doing a decent job of listening to customer feedback in adding features to Premiere Pro. In many instances, these added features were simply standard features picked up from Final Cut Pro 7 – things that those switching to Premiere Pro instantly missed. [Read more…]

“The ‘Final Cut Pro X Cookbook’ contains recipes that will take you from the importing process and basic mechanics of editing up through many of FCPX’s advanced tools needed by top-tier editors on a daily basis. Edit quickly and efficiently, fix image and sound problems with ease, and get your video out to your client or the world easily.”

FxFactory 4.0 is now available and adds support for Adobe Premiere Pro. The plug-in management program has been a great tool for using with FCP X, Motion, FCP 7 and After Effects; however, the one video editing program that I use the most hasn’t been supported and, as a result, I’ve not been able to take advantage of so many cool video plug-ins. But now it is.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2meyRQBwT8&w=640&h=360]

FxFactory 4.0 is a free download and there are a few free plug-ins that are available with it. Additional plug-ins are available for trial and purchase with integration inside of FxFactory.

Industrial Revolution’s XEffects Tech Transitions is a plug-in for Final Cut Pro X that features 30 stylized transitions that work from within the FCP X transitions panel. Check out the following demo video for a taste of several of the available transitions: [Read more…]

Digital Anarchy has announced Beauty Box Video 2.0, which is a video plug-in for smoothing and retouching skin in the major NLEs. In addition to compatibility with After Effects 7.0–CS6, Final Cut Pro X, Final Cut Pro 7, and Premiere Pro CS4–CS6, version 2.0 adds support for Assimilate Scratch, Scratch Lab, Sony Vegas Por and Movie Studio.

Beauty Box Video 2.0 retails for $199, but is available for $149 through July 15, 2012.

Singular Software unveiled PluralEyes 3 back at NAB 2012. If you aren’t familiar with PluralEyes, it is a audio syncing program that took the HDSLR video editing world by storm a couple of years ago. Read my PluralEyes review from 2010.

Some NLEs, like FCP X, offer syncing capabilities in the box; however, it’s not near as full-featured as what you can do with PluralEyes 3. I caught a brief demo of it and the sync speed with tons of clips is remarkable. Additionally, the interface is not near as clunky as the older versions. If you want to give it a try, the free beta for PluralEyes 3 is now open.

Right now, it’s only available for OS X 10.7 and will work with FCP 5/6/7 and FCP X 10.0.4 and Premiere Pro CS5/5.5/6. Media Composer is not supported in this iteration of the beta release.